Hidden
by FantasySci5
Summary: Harper comes back from a trip, with a secret. When it 'comes out', it surprisingly has a connection to Trance. Purple TranceHarper
1. The Event

Hidden

This came to me, and it's really off the wall!

SUMMARY: Harper comes back from a trip, with a secret. When it 'comes out', it surprisingly has a connection to Trance.

A quick question before you go on...Would it be HORRIBLE, and make me a HORRID person and writer, if I use one of my made-up-characters in more than one story! The future of some fan fictions of mine DEPEND on YOUR answer! Thank you for your time.

I'm just joking, but I have 2 good ideas for 2 different stories, using the same made-up-character. Do you know what I'm talking about!

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Harper shuffled his booted feet as he made his way out of the Maru. Beka closely followed. She was worried, past worried.

They had just came back from a mission, a mission that had gone wrong. Some Nietchiens who belonged to the Commonwealth lived on a forest planet, and had asked, or to say more precisely, demanded, the Andromeda to supply them with food and ammunition. All the others were busy with different things, so it was just Beka and Harper who went to the Nietchiens aid.

The two had hand-carried the supplies to the Loret Pride, who had made a fort in the middle of the forest. When asked about needing ammunition, they said that some of the local primitives were hostile, and they had to protect themselves to 'insure their survival'.

Beka had gone on ahead of Harper, with a hand full of food supplies. The thick trees crowded them, and they were lost in thoughts. A scream broke Beka of her thoughts.

When she turned around, she saw Harper being dragged quickly away by savage beings. She dropped her cargo, and ran as fast as she could to her adopted brother. But crudely made spears pelted around her, one lodging itself in her leg. As she lost consciousness, all she could think about through the pain was Harper.

She had waken up in a soft bed, in the Loret fort. She recovered, but there was no word about Harper. The Loret refused to go out there and look, because it 'damaged their chances of survival.' But they promised to keep a look out for any clues.

3 days later, a day off schedule of when they should have been starting back, Harper appeared at the fort. Beka had tried to look for any harm done to him, or ask him about what happened, but he refused to talk about it.

He was much more quieter than usual, and only said things that were important in a soft voice. There was no jokes, not anything.

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Beka whispered to the other occupant of Med-Deck. The purple girl nodded her head in agreement.

"Trance, he won't tell me what happened, and I can't find anything wrong with him. Not that he would let me examine him, but I tried to. Your close to him, also. Do you think you can try and get what happened out of him!" Beka asked the mysterious being, worry tracing itself on her tired face.

Million of bad thoughts rushed through her head, as she thought what the beings had done to him. Beat him, torture. Maybe that wasn't their Harper. Maybe it was an imposter. She voiced some of her concerns to Trance.

"Now you are just getting paranoid. Don't worry; I'll find out what happened. To coin a phrase from the Book of Harper, 'Trust in the Trance. The Trance is good.'

Trance gave Beka an encouraging smile. A booming voice broke the sudden silence in the Medical Deck.

"Beka. Could you come up and pilot us to our next slip-stream point?" Dylan's strong voice asked over the comms.

Beka left Trance to think of a way to get her young friend to open up.

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Trance nervously fidgeted in Hydroponics, as she waited for the arrival of Harper. The whoosh of doors alerted Trance of someone coming in.

Harper made his way through the maze of plants, until he found his Purple Pixie, his Sparkly Purple Babe.

But those names never made their appearance in Harper's brain, or on his lips. All he said was, " 'Lo."

Trance nodded, smiling like a fool, then motioned for Harper to sit down on a hidden bench among the plants.

He timidly sat down, on edge. Trance sighed. It was never easy.

Surprisingly, when she asked him what happened, he answered. "Trance. I want to tell you. But I'm gonna have to pull a Trance, and say that I'll tell you later. But, believe me, I'm fine."

But the smile he flashed her didn't reach his eyes. There was no sparkle. But, if he wasn't in bad condition, there was nothing she could do for him but be there for him.

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It had been months since the kidnapping. Since then, a new Harper had emerged. The jokes and hit-on-the-girls attitude were gone, but this wasn't a sad, depressed Harper, either. He was quiet, and happy.

He spent more time 'in his head', then with the rest of the crew. The others slowly stopped worrying. Often they would find Harper, alone, deep in the Andromeda's vents, doing something to pass the time. But, when he was around his crewmates, he wasn't hostile. He would invite conversation, and company. Those were the good days.

A few days, he would be depressed. Much more depressed than his original self could ever be. The crew knew something deep inside Harper was wrong.

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Sorry, the 'ending' was a bit lame, but this isn't the ending of the story, so don't worry! This story wouldn't leave me alone, and I haven't posted anything new about Andromeda in awhile. Sorry, chapters and ideas are becoming hard. So...I hope you liked this! I DO have a plan on this (Yay!).


	2. Density

_Hidden-Part 2_

Hello! I got a whole bucket load of reviews on the first chapter, which I don't even like that much. I promise, it gets better! It was pointed out to me that it wasn't very detailed, and I agree whole-heartedly. Reading it back now, I see that. Usually in my stories I am so detailed, that it takes me a long while to even get to the plot. I was trying to not do that, and I guess I forgot that I have to use some. I'll put some detail into this! Your reviews were so nice, and that was just the chapter that starts this fic up! Don't worry about the 'using same characters' thing in the first chapter, I found a way around that! Oh, by the way, this is set before Ouroboros. Okay, weird, crazy things up ahead, but always in the up most of seriousness!

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Andromeda's avatar was walking through the dead ship, doing her routine check. It was pitch black on most of the decks, because the lights were turned off to save energy. Everyone else was asleep, so this was a perfect time for the ship-made-flesh to check on herself.

Rommie pushed her new red highlighted hair out of her eyes, as she walked down another corridor, her boots clicking on the grated floor. Everything seemed to be running smoothly, until she saw a panel with wires sticking out by an open vent. White sparks sprinkled onto the floor every once in a while, giving out a little buzz. Rommie was about to check if Harper was sleeping, when the air in the corridor suddenly became very heavy. She scanned around, and found an elevation of air density all throughout the ship, that had happened so suddenly.

She homed in on Harper, and found that he was indeed sleeping. It seemed he was having trouble breathing through the thick air. Rommie tried checking on the other crew members, but something was not letting her. She felt the air right where she was get heavier. It almost crushed her circuits, but as soon as it appeared around her, the high concentration of air had disappeared.

She tried to check up on her crew again, but now she couldn't find any of them. Her whole radar scanning wasn't working. She walked over to the nearest consol screen, and tried to talk to the ship. The screen remained black, sometimes static breaking out, in the eerie silence. She tried to hook up to her AI, and managed to make it up the track and into the matrix. She looked around for her AI, but immediately was shot back to her body. She tried to open a comm. link throughout the ship, but couldn't do that either. Rommie thought about it, and decided her AI was shut down. Everything electric; doors, lights, and comms., weren't working. The engines were dead, which meant they were floating dead in space. Which was not a good thing.

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Rommie walked through the ship, trying to find any of her crew. She had checked the sleeping quarters, but no one was there. They must have woke up, and tried to find the others to find out what was happening.

It would have been easier if she had had a full sized crew, but she was looking for only five people. Three humans, one Nietzschean, and one purple girl. Rev Bem wasn't on the ship, because he had taken a vacation to go to a Monastery Meeting, or something like that. If Andromeda had a full crew, she would have surely run into someone by now.

Rommie was about to round a corner, when she heard footfalls on the other side. Turning the corner, she saw Beka. "Beka. I'm glad I found somebody."

She read a massive surge of unnatural energy from Beka's brain waves, but otherwise she seemed fine. She was even breathing well in the high air density. Speaking of, the density on the ship seemed to have lightened up almost at the same time it had disappeared from around Rommie. Beka's body, though, had a high density mass, which was very unnatural.

"I'm not Beka. I'm Dylan!" Dylan's strict voice boomed out of Beka's body.

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Thanks to my reviewers, who are so nice to me, even when the story isn't at it's best. You guys are wonderful! I hope the story got a whole lot better! I'm not sure if Rommie can access her own AI, but I think she can. But, of course, she can't right now, for some reason. I know, this chapter was mostly about Rommie, and didn't have any Harper in it at all, but I promise he's in the next chapters. You may have seen this 'theme' before, but my spin on things is a bit different!


	3. Who's Who

_Hidden-Part 3_

Hello! Thank you for the kind reviews! My science is horrible, so all this 'air density' and 'brain wave patterns' are not true, and just a creation of my own mind. Sorry this has taken so long to put up. I've gotten a sudden obsession with Lost.

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Rommie swallowed down a gasp, then quickly scanned Beka. Everything was in place, except the certain pattern of brain waves was different, as brain waves are different for every person. She compared it to when she had last scanned Dylan and Beka, and found that it truly was Dylan inside of Beka.

"Dylan! How can you be inside of Beka!"

Beka's shoulder length blonde hair flipped back and forth as she shook her head. "I don't know. First, I was sleeping in my own body, then I woke up in Beka's room, in her body!"

Rommie tried not to let her artificial eyebrows rise up in disbelief, but every programmed instinct within her screamed that what was happening was not logically possible. She tried to override her error codes that were popping up like crazy right now, and if she was her AI, it would be a piece of cake. But the human in her avatar took over, like it usually did, and she put her hands on her hips. Beka looked crestfallen, and a pout that was most definitely characterized as Dylan's crept on her lips. "You don't believe me."

Rommie blinked, forcefully having her AI help to smother the error commands telling her to shutdown for a logical diagnosis.

"I...do. I do believe you. There is no other explanation for the irregular brain patterns. I think the low density has affected me somehow. I'm going to have to get Harper to take a look at me."

Beka immediately looked concerned, putting a friendly hand on her shoulder. Rommie berated herself, trying to remember that this was Dylan, and not Beka. But it was hard to look at Beka, with her black tank top and shorts that she wore to bed, and even her blonde hair was frizzed up from sleep, and try to define her as Dylan.

"Right now, I think we should try to find the rest of our crew. They weren't in the sleeping quarters, so we can pretty much guess they're up." The natural leader in Dylan spoke up.

They didn't need to ask each other to know where the first place they should look should be. They started walking to the nearest service corridor leading to Command.

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After ten minutes of hot-wiring the doors to Command, it swished open, revealing their missing crewmembers inside. The scene inside was the weirdest Rommie had ever seen. Dylan's body was standing by the doors, his hands on his hips in a very Beka-like fashion. Rommie didn't need to scan to know that was Beka.

Harper, Tyr, and Trance were standing in a line by the controls, and it was the most apparent that their personalities didn't fit their bodies. Trance's delicate purple fingers were wrapped around her tail, which was much closer to her face than usual, and her wide eyes were full of wonder and excitement. Tyr was rocking up and down on the balls of his feet, and a very un-Tyr like grin was planted on his face. Harper was scowling, his arms crossed.

Rommie was about to run a scan for curiosity sake, when a surge of energy shocked through her.

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A spark ran up Rommie's body, and a moment later, she crumpled to the ground. Dylan caught her before she hit the deck, and got a nasty left-over shock. At the same time, something shuddered throughout the ship, rocking the entire Command with the blast. An emergency siren wailed in the background, echoing down the lonely corridors until it reached its destination.

They had heard that wail too many times not to know what it was; the slipstream drive reaching overload. Trance seemed torn, but nodding to herself, she started forward with a determined glint in her shinning eyes. She grabbed a nano-welder from Harper's tool belt, then started unscrewing the nearest conduit. Within seconds it was detached, and Trance was already clambering up into it. She turned around, sparing a quick glance at the rest of them.

"I have to go fix the slipstream, before it blows. Rommie should be okay shut down, so I'll fix her after I'm done with the slipstream." Harper's high, quick voice came from Trance's body, and it was no longer a secret who Harper was.

Dylan gestured back at the Command doors, asking, "Why don't you just use the doors?"

Harper's eyebrow itched up, and looking back, Dylan saw the doors had closed shut again. "Vents are faster. How do you think we got in here? They don't call me a genius for noting!" Harper gave a cheeky grin, worthy of Harper's own face, and scampered deeper into the ship's ducks.

Tyr's body bounced up and down, clasping his hands together in excitement. Trance's soft voice drifted out of Tyr, as she exclaimed, "Wow, Tyr! You are so tall!"

Everyone looked to Harper's sulking body. He was scowling, almost to the point of pouting, his arms crossed. A strong, deep voice radiated out of Harper's tiny body. "I do not like this arrangement."

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Just wanted to make it clear that once I mention what character is in whose body, I refer to the actual person, NOT the body. Understand? Hope you like it!


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